Council lowers monthly rate in Town Square garages

Other actions could make it easier for merchants to keep customers, shopkeepers say

The City Council on Monday lowered the monthly rate in the Rockville Town Square parking garages and agreed to allow businesses in the mixed-use center to offer special promotions for those who pay to park.

The changes stemmed from a list of options compiled by Town Square merchants who have said the city's paid parking system has in part deterred business.

Beginning May 1, monthly parkers will pay $65 to park instead of $75, putting the garages on par with the least expensive lots in the Town Center area.

The changes also include offering discounts to customers in lieu of parking validation at each store and restaurant's discretion and adding promotions to the bottom of parking receipts.

But merchants said the changes are not enough.

The biggest problem with the pre-paid system is that customers worry about feeding their meter instead of staying and enjoying the shopping center, said Stephen Schadler, general manager of Austin Grill and liaison for the Town Square Merchants Association.

"They address a finance concern, but it doesn't address a PR concern," Schadler said in an interview Monday. "It hurts businesses, makes people uncomfortable, it hurts the [Town] Square and ultimately it hurts the town of Rockville."

Schadler said merchants on Monday agreed on two ideas that he said would address that concern, including moving to a gated system where customers pay as they leave the garage and lowering the all-day fee.

The merchants recommend adding a gate at the garage entrance on Route 355, identified by city staff as the only entrance where a gate could be installed because of the configuration of the garages.

Lowering the all-day fee, which is $10, could also entice customers to pay the fee and stay as long as they would like.

Council members did not specifically address the additional ideas, but discussed the possibility of reprogramming the system to allow people to pay to park in 15-minute increments instead of hour increments.

They did not approve the installation of 23 parking meters in the garages that would offer 15-minute increments, which was a staff recommendation. They also discussed the suggestion to offer two hours of parking for $1.

Given the additional suggestions, Mayor Susan R. Hoffmann said she would like to revisit the decision to extend the hours of paid parking later this spring.

"I'm going to want to look at that long and hard before we do that in May, because I think that might turn out to be the most user-friendly approach," Hoffmann said.

The council voted 4 to 1 to revisit the extension of parking. Councilman Piotr Gajewski was the lone dissenter and has supported extending paid parking hours in the garages in lieu of city subsidy.

"We didn't create this, we inherited this mess and it is a mess with the garages that we are losing so much money," Gajewski said. "Having inherited it, I think that the best way to handle it is to run them at the highest profit possible."

In October, the council unanimously extended the hours people must pay to park in the Town Square garages until 10 p.m. on weekdays and from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturdays beginning May 4.